


Selfish Victor

by Littlebluejay_hidingpeanuts



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-22 10:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22381711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlebluejay_hidingpeanuts/pseuds/Littlebluejay_hidingpeanuts
Summary: Essay on the character of Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.Potential Straw-man argument.
Kudos: 7





	Selfish Victor

In Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, the main character, Victor Frankenstein, proves to be the worst sort of human being. Most would argue that the people around Victor have some influence or part in Victor’s misfortune. It could be said that Victor’s father Alphonse is an absentee father who leaves Victor to his own devices. He fails to provide a welcoming home and to teach Victor right from wrong. Alphonse’s abandonment puts Victor in a preemptive position to abandon others in his life. People could also argue that Victor’s creation as an unholy mock of humanity is destined for evil as God is the only one with the power to create life. The creature’s ugliness is further physical evidence of its evilness. This would suggest that Victor is only partially responsible for the deaths of his family and the obsession with killing the monster which leaves Victor’s life a desolate disappointment. People might assume then that Victor is an okay guy with bad luck. This is the wrong assumption. The people around him are not responsible for his mistakes. They are useful members of society, but in being in contact with Victor, these other people become tainted. Alphonse is a good father, but Victor takes advantage of his giving nature. The creature has the potential to be a good man, but Victor abandons him. Victor plays with people as if they were his toys. He creates the monster. He neglects his family. He drives his and his family’s lives into the ground, literally. Victor’s failure to learn the importance of family from Alphonse is the deciding factor that leads to the destruction of the Frankensteins as evidenced by the deaths of the family by his son, the monster. Victor Frankenstein is the antagonist to his own story.

  
Alphonse Frankenstein cares for his children, especially his eldest, Victor. He teaches Victor about electricity, an exciting new invention (25). He provides Victor with books that interest him, even sending him to his school of choice in Ingolstadt (27). When Victor creates his monster, Alphonse, unknowing of this horrid creation, silently supports Victor by not badgering him over his lack of letters home (37). Alphonse made Victor promise to write. He tells him, “You must pardon me, if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally neglected,” (37). He means that if Victor does not write, Alphonse will believe he is completely disregarding his studies as well as his family. This sounds exactly like any good parent’s warning that their child will apply himself or his privileged education will disappear. Alphonse is trying to ensure that Victor will not just drift in his life. Alphonse has money, and is fully providing for Victor. He is almost too soft on Victor. Victor relies on this. He says, “My father made no reproach in his letters; and only took notice of my silence by inquiring into my occupations more particularly than before,” (38). Alphonse does not reprimand Victor even as he blatantly disobeys him.

  
Alphonse does keep Victor connected to the family no matter how much Victor pushes them away. He informs Victor of William’s death (52). In light of this tragedy and the trial and execution of William’s supposed murderer, Alphonse takes his remaining family to the Alps (72). This is a brilliant idea. It will get everyone’s mind off the deaths and create some family bonding. This does not work as Victor heads off on his own. Alphonse is definitely supporting his eldest son, trying to teach him to become his successor, and ensuring that Victor will have a family by insisting he marry Elizabeth. It is not Alphonse’s fault that Victor is a selfish bastard. If his son were anyone else, the child would flourish under Alphonse’s care.

  
Victor Frankenstein is a selfish man who is continuously trapped in the arrogance and irresponsibility of teenage adolescence. He is given literally everything. His future wife is handpicked and raised alongside him as a childhood playmate. Education is practically thrown at him. Victor grabs hold of university to the point where he forgets who is providing it, and fails to properly graduate. He simply leaves the school to pursue creating life. He does not write to his family as they have asked him to do. He should be very grateful that they understand how he gets so obsessed when he is involved with his work. He gets a holiday to the Alps to reconnect with his family during a time of grief, and takes the first opportunity to leave. His father wants him to marry Elizabeth, and Victor asks for a two year vacation which he gets! Victor chooses every time to abandon those who need him.

  
When Victor made the monster, it was for his own arrogant design. He wished to prove that he had the power to create life just like God. He said, “No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs,” (36). This is presuming Victor even does anything to deserve gratitude. He abandons his creation because it is ugly when it is Victor himself who pieced together the monster in such a grotesque fashion (40). The guilt he feels after every death is what he deserves. He is responsible for every death, and he knows it. His father has taught him at every turn that family is what matters, yet when he has the chance to demonstrate that he has learned this, he fails to do so. He does not teach the monster as Alphonse has taught him. He does not love it as Alphonse has loved him. He even destroys the one thing his monster ever asks for: a girlfriend. The monster wants a companion; some sort of family that Victor has failed to give him. Just as he previously puts off his own marriage to Elizabeth, Victor flat out destroys his son’s wife, proving that he does not value family. He deserves every heartache the monster deals out for his cruel treatment of others. He acts like a little boy playing with and crushing his toys before leaving them in a mess, but these are not toys. These are people. Victor is not a boy nor is he a god. He has no right to naively think his actions will not have consequences for they are all he deserves, not the gratitude or love he was so freely given which he squanders.

Victor’s creation has the potential to become an educated, morally good being, but Victor’s inattention leads the monster to become a mass murderer. Frankenstein’s monster, for all his size and strength, is a child. It is really the creature to whom Alphonse should have been father. There is no doubt that he would have looked passed the creature’s hideous appearance given his love of the gruesome, especially if Alphonse could have heard him speak. No one that eloquent could be all bad, or not at least have the potential for good. The creature describes his first moments to Victor as being “dark,” “cold,” and “desolate” (80). He felt “helpless” and “miserable” (80). Being all alone in the world after Victor’s abandonment, the creature seeks companionship. Unfortunately, because of his grotesque appearance people do not welcome him. He tells Victor, “some fled, some attacked me, until grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country,” (83). All the creature wants is “one as deformed and horrible as [him]self [that could] not deny herself to [him],” (118). This is of course only after it has been proven to the monster that he is too hideous to be accepted by normal society. Everyone runs from him: Victor, the old man, the De Lacy family. His own father thought him too ugly to raise and abandoned him. It is no surprise that his rage pushed him to kill. The first time, William’s death, is a result of the pain he feels at Victor’s abandonment. His father left him. He tries to make the best of it with his innocent mind by searching for warmth, food, and friends. He is shunned and wounded. He comes across a human who uses the name Frankenstein as a deterrent and a threat. This is the red cape for the bull. Once he finds killing to be so easy, putting his revenge against Victor into practice is just a matter of finding Victor. He tortures Victor by killing the rest of his family and laying out clues for Victor to follow. The monster becomes the killer in a slasher film, but whose fault is that? The creature wants love and a family. Without giving the creature the slightest chance, Victor walks away. As the creature’s father, Victor is responsible for everything his creation does. This explains the overwhelming guilt Victor always feels which eventually makes him so desperately ill. It is not the creature’s fault when no one has taught him right from wrong. Victor should have taught him that. Alphonse would have been a perfect father figure. It is a tragedy that this poor child was driven to such terrible acts.

  
Alphonse is the father the creature should have had. The creature is so yearning for love; he would have latched onto Alphonse’s giving nature. Victor is the nasty little fly in the ointment. For all his university education, Victor has not learned responsibility. He fails his father and his son. He does not continue the family honor. He treats his son like a vacuum salesman; unwanted, an annoyance, and hated, until he starts killing people. Then, he gets Victor’s attention. Victor does not even accomplish anything with his life except to tell Robert Walton to continue on his vengeance which proves pointless when the monster comes to mourn over Victor’s body. Victor’s bad treatment of everyone has destroyed Victor in the process. It is as the monster says in the end, “He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish,” (190).

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Marilyn Butler. Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus: the 1818 text. [Reissued]. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.


End file.
